Obama leads in earliest vote

US: Buoyed by a surge in support from young voters, Barack Obama could become the first Democrat to capture traditionally Republican Virginia in more than four decades Tuesday, helping him clinch the White House.

With more than five million Virginians registered to vote statewide, including 500,000 mostly young new voters, election officials reported heavy turnout as polling stations opened earlier than much of the rest of the country. Callers to a national voter hotline reported experiencing long lines and voting machine problems but despite the technical problems, Obama supporters were optimistic.

“This is the right time for the pendulum to swing in favor of the Democrats and Virginia will set the stage for an Obama victory,” said Richard McClevey, an ex-State Department employee campaigning in the southwestern town of Blacksburg for the 47-year-old Illinois senator.

Obama came up a big winner in the presidential race in Dixville Notch and Hart’s Location, New Hampshire, where a tradition of having the first Election Day ballots tallied lives on.

Democrat Obama defeated Republican John McCain by a count of 15 to 6 in Dixville Notch, where a loud whoop accompanied the announcement. It was the first time Dixville Notch chose the Democratic candidate since 1968.

At least four independent polls over the last week showed Obama has an edge by up to nine percentage points over Republican Senator John McCain in traditionally conservative Virginia, which last voted for a Democrat for president in 1964.

had agreed on one thing during the longest presidential campaign in US history - their promise to slam the door on the era of George W. Bush.

But they were deeply at odds over how to fix the nation’s crumbling economy and end the 5 1/2-year war in Iraq, the issues that sent Bush’s job approval plummeting to a record low at the end of his eight-year presidency.

Record numbers of Americans were expected at polling stations across the US adding their ballots to 29 million citizens who had already voted in 30 states. The early vote tally suggested an advantage for Obama, with official statistics showing that Democrats voted in larger numbers than Republicans in North Carolina, Colorado, Florida and Iowa. All four states voted for Bush in 2004.

Sad news overshadowed the campaign on Monday when Obama announced the death of his grandmother, whose personality and bearing shaped him deeply. Madelyn Payne Dunham was 86 when she died of cancer late Sunday in Hawaii.

“She’s gone home,” Obama said, tears running down both cheeks as tens of thousands of rowdy supporters at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte grew silent as he announced Dunham’s death. The family said a private ceremony would be held later.

He explained to the North Carolina audience how Dunham inspired his campaign by her lifetime of hard work and sacrifice.

“In just one more day we have the opportunity to honour all those quiet heroes all across America,” Obama said. “We can bring change to America to make sure their work and their sacrifice is honoured. That’s what we’re fighting for.” Obama wrapped up his campaign by speaking to a crowd estimated at more than 70,000 people in Manassas, Virginia, near the site of the first major battle of the American Civil War that ended slavery, before heading home to Chicago to await the election returns.

McCain, a 72-year-old four-term Arizona senator, ended the contest on Monday with a frantic and grueling dash through several traditionally Republican states still not securely in his camp or even leaning to Obama.

McCain stopped in Florida, Virginia, Indiana, New Mexico and Nevada. And he again passed through Pennsylvania, the only state that voted Democratic in 2004 where he still hoped for a win.

He was closing out the endurance test past midnight at a home-state rally in Prescott, Arizona, a state where Obama has been running television commercials in the campaign’s final days after polls showed a tightening race.

On election eve, the 47-year-old Obama, a first-term senator from Illinois, was favoured to win all the states Democrats captured in 2004, when Bush defeated Democratic Sen. John Kerry. That would give him 251 electoral votes.

He was leading or tied in several states won by Bush, giving him several paths to the 270 vote threshold - such as victories in Ohio or Florida, or in a combination of smaller states.

McCain, meanwhile, must hold as many Bush states as possible while trying to capture a Democratic stronghold, such as Pennsylvania.

While no battleground state was ignored, Virginia, where no Democrat has won in 40 years, and Ohio, where no Republican president has ever lost, seemed most coveted. Together, they account for 33 electoral votes that McCain must win.

Obama sprinted into the lead after economic concerns overwhelmed the war in Iraq, as the primary concern among voters. Even though Republican experts argued the race was tightening, several polls suggested Obama’s lead was growing.

A USA Today/Gallup poll published on Monday found likely voters nationwide favouring Obama by 11 points over McCain, 53-42 per cent, with a margin of error of two percentage points. Other polls showed Obama with a seven or eight percentage-point lead.

Polls conducted by Quinnipiac University showed Obama with significant leads in two critical swing states, Ohio and Pennsylvania, and tied with McCain in Florida, where the prize is 27 electoral votes. A win for Obama in any of these three states would be hard for McCain to overcome.

The American presidential election amounts to separate contests in the 50 US states plus the District of Columbia, home to the capital city. At stake are 538 electors, with the winning candidate needing to capture at least half plus one. Electors are apportioned to the states roughly according to population.

Agencies